by Dean Murray
"I can help with the second problem. I mean I can't make hundreds of werewolves magically go away, but I have…contacts inside of the rebels who are currently trying to overthrow the Coun'hij. If we can find a way to ferret out the location of the Coun'hij's base then my friends will come in force and some of them are pretty big equalizers. We'd at least have a chance of winning, maybe even more than a chance if enough of the independent packs have decided to join the rebellion by then."
I knew I shouldn't feel bad about being so vague where Alec and the others were concerned. Knowing names and numbers wouldn't actually make any difference to Geoffrey, not in any way that mattered, but I still felt bad for some reason.
I couldn't let that sway me though. Alec and the others were already facing off against the combined might of the Coun'hij. If Geoffrey ended up under the thumb of some older mentalist then everything he knew was going to become common knowledge among the vampire community. The last thing I wanted was to put Alec and the rest of my friends in the crosshairs of a bunch of vampires too.
Geoffrey looked at me for a long while, almost as though trying to figure out how far he could trust my promise of reinforcements, and then he nodded. "That's good, that's actually the piece I was more worried about."
"You mean that you've got a way to find the Coun'hij?"
"Yes, I think I do. It's going to require some groundwork before we can even hope for my plan to work, but it's a possibility. The Coun'hij must show their faces from time to time at least. It's impossible to rule otherwise."
"Yes, although as often as not it's merely their enforcers who come through to knock heads together."
Whatever response Geoffrey had planned on making was interrupted by the quiet chirp of the timer on the microwave.
"What's that for?"
Geoffrey was already on his feet and headed towards the bedroom. "It's time to hang a new bag for Ben."
The surge of emotion that shot through me was too complex to identify, and my beast was behind much of it, pushing with all of her might and lending the feelings more power than they otherwise would have had. Ben was ours and she didn't like Geoffrey sticking his nose in our business.
I was sure Geoffrey didn't think of his actions in that light, but what he was doing was a kind of challenge to our ownership. It was another reason for my beast to hate him, but I didn't share quite the same view of things. I didn't like what he was doing, but for me it was more about the fact that I'd come up short, not that Geoffrey had done anything wrong.
I was ready to kill innocents if needed, had potentially already done so, but I hadn't even thought to check on Ben when I woke up a few minutes ago. I was grateful that Geoffrey had taken such good care of Ben, but I was likewise embarrassed and disappointed in myself that he'd been forced to make up for my lack.
While I was still struggling through my feelings Geoffrey had stepped inside the bedroom and by the time I made it in he already had a new IV bag hanging from the light fixture mounted to the wall just above the bed.
Geoffrey was double-checking the line down to Ben's arm with the deft movements of a professional, but that wasn't what caught my eye. Ben looked content in a way that I'd only rarely seen before. Maybe looked wasn't the right word, maybe it was more about the way that he felt than anything else, but I was suddenly sure that Ben was more at ease with Geoffrey than he'd ever been with anyone else.
I waited to speak until we were back out in the main room and had the door closed so as not to bother Ben. "Thank you. For taking care of him and for taking care of me."
Geoffrey shrugged. "It wasn't like I could just let the two of you die, not if it might have meant that Rachel would refuse to tell me where Melody was. Besides, it's obvious that he means a lot to you. I guess you could say that Melody is my Ben. I understand at least some of what you're going through right now."
"But you're still going to let him sit there and suffer instead of fixing him now?"
"I'm afraid so. I don't take any joy in his suffering, but Ben is the only leverage that I have against you and Rachel. I'm not going to give that up, not if there is any way to avoid doing so."
"You make it really hard not to keep hating you."
Geoffrey acted like he hadn't heard me. "If you can find a way for us to capture one of the Coun'hij, preferably one of the less dangerous ones, then I can rip the location of Puppeteer and the rest of them out of his mind."
I blinked in surprise. Even with him sitting before me as a constant reminder of what vampires were capable of, it was still hard to think in terms of reading someone's mind. "You're strong enough to do that?"
Geoffrey's nod was a short, choppy motion. "I'm strong enough. The real question is what we'll have to do to them to weaken them sufficiently that they can't resist me."
"You don't like the idea of having to torture them, do you?"
"Not particularly, but I'll do it, and you'll help me if it comes to that."
It wasn't a question, and it wasn't a particularly challenging statement. He wasn't trying to draw any kind of rise out of me, he was just stating a fact that we both knew.
"I guess you're right at that. If it comes to it, I'll do even worse than torturing one of the Coun'hij's trained killers in order to save Ben."
"I think we understand each other quite well, Jasmin. That's the way that I feel about Melody too. Can you find a way for us to capture one of these guys?"
"I think so. Let me make a couple of calls."
I tried Alec first, but he didn't answer. I left a message asking him to give me a call and then hung up feeling more than a little betrayed by his failure to pick up. I debated among the remaining options open to me and then dialed Isaac's last known number.
"Jasmin, is that really you?"
"Hi, Isaac."
"You don't have any idea how good it is to hear your voice. Everyone else has pretty much gone dark lately."
"I was afraid of that, I just tried Alec and he didn't pick up. Are you, Ash and Kristin all okay?"
He cleared his throat and I could tell he was trying to decide whether or not to lie to me.
"Tell me the truth, Isaac."
"Things are pretty bad here. Kristin got hurt and lost a lot of blood. I've spent weeks now worrying that she was never going to wake up from her coma. We got forced down to the territory claimed by Ash's old pack."
"What the crap were you guys thinking? You have to get out of there right now or Onyx and the others will kill you!"
His breathing picked up as he struggled to keep control of himself. I'd crossed a line and we both knew it. Back in the old days Isaac had always been clearly dominant to me. I hadn't particularly liked that fact, although he'd been better to me than James had been, but it had been one of those hard realities that I hadn't been able to get away from.
That was all up in the air now. He and I hadn't faced off against each other since I'd manifested my third shape. It was anyone's guess who would win a fight right now. I had size and strength on my side for the first time ever, but he had years of experience fighting as a hybrid in his corner. My beast was eager for that fight, hungry to prove herself the better fighter, but I shouldn't have let that push me into treating him like he was subordinate to me.
"I'm sorry, Isaac, that was out of line. I'm having a harder time keeping control of stuff lately."
His laugh was a bitter-sounding thing. "Join the club. It seems like I want to rip the head off of anyone who even talks to me lately. The truth is that it's too late. Onyx's people found us within a few hours of us arriving. Ash tried to shoot his way out, but this new guy just shrugged off all of the bullets and practically tore him in two."
My hands were shaking, but I couldn't have said whether it was rage or fear causing it. "He'll be okay, though, right?"
"I'm not sure. Normally I'd say yes, but you know Ash, he's not a very fast healer."
It was bad news on several levels. I'd always liked Ash. He was competent in a quiet, no-nonsense
way and he'd been part of the glue that had held us all together when things had been at their worst, back when I'd been pretty sure that Alec was only days or weeks away from self-destructing and taking all of the rest of us down with him.
That would have been enough to make me want him to pull through his injury all by itself, but there was also the fact that with him and Kristin both injured Isaac was all by himself down there. Isaac was big and tough, but he wasn't going to be able to take on an entire pack all by himself.
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Yeah, me too. How's Ben?"
"Weaker every day. I don't know how much longer he's going to make it, but Rachel seems to finally be helping me rather than just leading me on some kind of cross-continental wild goose chase. Have you heard from any of the others?"
"Just Andrew."
I wasn't sure whether or not to pursue that particular line of questioning. Andrew had practically adopted Isaac. The two of them were close, but Andrew was also Jess's biological father. I couldn't necessarily blame Jess for what she'd done over the last few months, but talking about Jess was going to re-open some pretty deep wounds for Isaac.
"He's okay. We only had a minute to talk, but he told me that Jessica phoned him. He said that she was being really evasive about where they are, but that she's found some kind of big secret."
"I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing."
"I'm pretty sure it's a bad thing. Whatever Wyatt is involved in it isn't good."
Isaac paused to give me a chance to respond but I wasn't quite sure what to say about that either. He had an almost pathological hatred of Wyatt. I agreed that there was something off about Wyatt, Carson and Grayson, but that didn't necessarily mean that they were the villains of the piece.
"I'm serious, Jasmin. I'm starting to feel like I'm playing the wrong game, like I thought we were playing checkers and now it turns out that everyone is playing three-dimensional chess only I don't know the rules. Onyx has a new guy here, someone I've never heard of before, and he fights like Wyatt used to fight."
"That weird grappling style?"
"Yeah, that alone would pretty much make him unstoppable for the rest of us who don't know that kind of fighting, but that isn't all. Ash shot him, several times, and in all of the right places, but it didn't even slow him down. I saw bullets ricochet off of him after hitting places where I've been cut before. There shouldn't have been bone there, but there was."
I felt like throwing up. I could tell that Isaac was half convinced that he'd been seeing things, but I knew that he wasn't, only this wasn't just my secret to tell.
"Does he have blue eyes?"
"I don't remember for sure, but I don't think so. Why, how does that matter?"
"You need to do everything you can to stay clear of this guy, Isaac. You weren't imagining things. I can't explain, but your suspicions are correct, whoever he is he's going to be faster, stronger, and harder to kill than any hybrid has a right to be."
"Like Alec."
It wasn't a question, and I knew then that I'd just confirmed suspicions that he'd had for a while now.
"Yes, like Alec. If you could get around behind him and manage a good clinch you could still kill this guy, but otherwise it will be like fighting someone in armor."
"Where are his weak points?"
"I don't know, Isaac, I swear. I don't…I don't have it. Donovan might be able to tell you, but I'm not sure he'll be willing to give away Alec's secrets like that. Just stay clear of this guy, do whatever it takes."
"I understand, but I don't think that's going to be possible, Jasmin. Thanks for warning me though."
His voice was different. His words were fine, but the way that he was saying them made me want to cry. He hadn't given up, not exactly, but he sounded resigned. He was going to go down fighting, but he didn't expect to win.
Thanatas, the ancient king who'd been the last to rule as monarch over all of the wolves, had been a storied warrior, but very few people even suspected that his abilities had been more than just raw skill and the innate strength and speed of his hybrid body. I only knew because I was a direct descendant of one of his sons.
Thanatas had possessed the ability to mold his body, making it stronger and faster, but he hadn't stopped there. He'd gone on to reinforce many of the weak points that other hybrids attacked out of habit. Major blood vessels had been rerouted to be further away from the surface of the body and the shape of certain bones had been altered to provide additional protection for the vital organs.
All of that would have been astonishing enough by itself, but those changes had been passed on to Thanatas' sons. The rest of the moonborn at large didn't know why certain of our kind seemed to hit harder and move with blinding speed, but those of us who were the descendants of the monarchy knew it was because either our hybrid or our wolf form were blessed with the fruits of all of the tinkering that the old king had done.
Not every descendant manifested those special gifts, what we called the royal attributes, and nobody other than Thanatas had ever been both a royal wolf and a royal hybrid, but a royal wolf was nearly the equal of a normal hybrid and a royal hybrid had a decided edge over any normal hybrid. I'd been a royal wolf up until now, but it appeared that my manifestation of a third shape had robbed me of my royal attributes as a wolf without bestowing equivalent gifts on me as a hybrid.
Isaac was up against a fight he couldn't possibly win and there wasn't anything I could do to help him, not without at least temporarily abandoning my quest to save Ben.
"What if I came down there, Isaac? I could be down in New Orleans in a day or so."
"No, it's not worth it, Jas. There's no telling when I'll get backed into fighting this creep. You could arrive down here, and find me dead, and end up in the same position I'm looking at right now. Besides, I couldn't ask you to watch Ben die. You said it yourself. He doesn't have much time left."
"I want to tell you that you're wrong, but I can't seem to force myself to say the words."
"I know. It's because I'm right and you know it. Have you found this Geoffrey character yet?"
"Yes, it turns out he's a vampire and I'm going to have to help him before he'll save Ben for me."
Isaac considered what I'd just said for several seconds before responding. "I don't like the sound of that, Jas. Bloodsuckers can't be trusted. Everything I've ever read says that they are all cunning and amoral in ways that sometimes even the Coun'hij can't equal."
"I know, but Rachel says it's the only way."
"What do you need from me?"
I didn't want to say the words, but I forced them out. "We need the location of Puppeteer and the rest of the Coun'hij. You've spent time thinking about where you'd go if you had to leave because of the way things have been going with Jessica. I need a pack with ties to the Coun'hij that is small enough I have a chance of taking it over."
"You knew that? You knew I was looking at leaving the pack and making a run for it?"
"Yeah. I didn't have any evidence, but it's what I would have been doing in your place. I don't blame you."
Isaac sighed. "I figured if you all found out that you'd feel like I was betraying you."
"Like I said, I understand why you wanted out. Can you think of a pack that might fit the bill?"
"I'm not sure. I mostly was looking for packs that were more independent than that, since the Coun'hij tends to take a dim view of people coming in and deposing leaders who have an established history of toeing the line."
Isaac considered the problem for a few more heartbeats before going on. "You know, in some ways that could make things easier. The Coun'hij tends to scrape off the cream of the crop out of their allied packs, so there doesn't tend to be as much talent there as what you see in the independent packs."
"Right, a lot of the time they end up being on the smaller side too."
"I think your best bet is Duluth then. Between the cold and the snow it's one of the less desirable territo
ries, so they haven't had anyone challenge up there for a couple of decades. You'll still be up against some stiff competition though. The alpha there isn't anything too special, but he's still got more than two hundred years of fighting under his belt. Your biggest problem is going to be a guy named Branson. He's practically an honorary enforcer for the Coun'hij. He's big and fast, not as big and fast as you, but he's good and you haven't been in very many fights as a hybrid yet."
"Yeah, I know. If you've got a better idea for finding the Coun'hij I'm all ears."
"Sorry, nothing comes to mind. I guess we've both got some impossible fights ahead of us."
"Yeah, I guess we do. I'll see you on the other side."
Chapter 10
Geoffrey
United Medical Implements and Supply
Toledo, Ohio
Geoffrey watched Jasmin disappear into the medical supply shop and wondered once again why he'd agreed to such a risky plan. Actually that wasn't fair, he knew exactly why he'd agreed. He couldn't bring himself to give up on Melody while there was even a slight chance that she was still alive and in need of his help. She never would have ended up in trouble if not for him. He owed her that much and more.
Even so, it felt very much like they were risking everything on a single throw of the dice. Jasmin had explained enough about shape shifter challenge law for him to understand that she couldn't just stroll up and challenge the leader of another pack to single combat. She was going to have to make her way through each and every member of the pack who was willing to fight her first.
Jasmin was confident that she'd be back up to full strength by the time they made it up to Minnesota, but Geoffrey wasn't stupid. By the time she'd fought two or three of her own kind she was probably going to be even weaker than she was now.
The entire plan was madness but Geoffrey didn't have a better one to offer up. They couldn't just hang around the other pack's territory hoping that someone from the Coun'hij would swing by for a visit. Jasmin was confident that the other pack would smell Geoffrey sooner or later and come after him, and even if that wasn't the case there was still the fact that Ben was getting weaker by the hour and there was no telling what kind of privations Melody was suffering through.